The porch has been designed widely and in a cool way, with natural stone
stairs, a glass facade allowing the light to stream inside, and white walls. On
long silver chains, baskets with fatsias are hanging down from the ceiling.
There’s a vague smell of paint and cement, as if this part of the block of houses
has recently been refurbished. Children’s drawings have been hung up next to
some of the doors; one of those doors, with a huge Plexiglas nameplate saying
GERHARD & CELINE, has even been decorated with a ribbon saying HURRAY,
WE’VE HAD A BABY GIRL. Next to others, sport shoes are lying around,
or some skates and an umbrella in rainbow colours.

The right front door on the third floor, by contrast, is unadorned; a bluish
grey sombre surface, revealing nothing about the occupant. A small simple bell
has been affixed to the frame. After a rather long wait, the door slowly opens.
The first thing to catch the eye is the Marmoleum floor, in a distinguished
tone in between brick and Bordeaux red. Tarnished and mat pieces alternate
with each other irregularly; in some places, near the plinths, in front of a door
which – as is evident from a round metal plate in the position FREE – leads
to the toilet, the Marmoleum has lost its colour and has been worn out to
become ashen dark grey. The walls of the narrow corridor are plain mustard
yellow. Besides the front door and the toilet door, there are three other doors;
all closed. A round grey green ceiling lamp with white stripes, like beams in
a copper fitting, diffuses a faint light. An oak wood hall stand, with a hat shelf
and cast-iron hooks, carries a grey raincoat, a small coonskin cloak, various
rain hats and an astrakhan cap. Right above a yellowed light switch, a framed
tile has been fixed with the saying: AN EFFICIENT WOMAN IS THE BEST
POSSIBLE SAVING.

Further away, a beam of light falls on the Marmoleum coming from the right.
A sixth door is ajar. The woman, who seems to weigh nothing, leads the way.
The walls of the living room are an old rose colour. Where it is brushed by
the sun, the wallpaper has faded to pale orange. The curtains, printed with
brown, orange and creamy blocks and balls, are open. The room smells like
a show room at the rear of a museum for cultural anthropology with a very
faint trace of cigarette smoke. The floor is covered with carpets. A round table
with chairs has been placed in the middle. The woman sits down, slowly, consciously.
The act is difficult for her; it seems like she is climbing a hill.
A cup and saucer are placed on the tablecloth, decorated with embroidered
roses. Instead of a teaspoon, a cut festively striped straw sticks out of the cup.
There’s a spiced biscuit on the saucer.

She speaks with a Gelderland accent. ‘In your brain you can do everything,’
she says. Her well shaped waxy hands, her forearms and the upper part of her
body are shaking. Parkinson’s disease. ‘But god damn it – yes, I’m allowed to
say that, you aren’t – I can’t even carry a small bottle of milk.’

She reaches for the saucer with both hands and brings the cup to her mouth.
The vertical wrinkles in her lips get tense, the straw turns brown. When she
has sucked up some coffee, she slowly lowers the cup to the cloth. She picks up
the biscuit and breaks off a piece using all her strength. Then she looks at me
and says in a dry tone: ‘Jesus took the bread in his hands, broke it down and
distributed it to his disciples.’

Her appearance, her face, even her voice, are at one with the objects in the
room: an oval silhouette in ebony of an affably smiling girl’s face in profile,
a wind-up clock shaped as a stepped gable, a scale model of a three-master
with large brown sails standing on top of a French-polished wall cabinet and
next to it a white Jesus statue (without a halo, it has fallen behind the cabinet);
a collection of English tea tins, candles in silver candlesticks, a dated radiocabinet,
black-and-white photographs, semi-abstract hard coloured paintings
with thick paint structures applied with a pallet knife: stylized birds, a
Moresque gate in a Spanish seaside resort – all in good shape.

If I want to paint her portrait, all these objects should have a place in it. But
that would never suit, I am thinking, while I watch her trying to prize out an
ultra light menthol cigarette from the packet.

I help her with her stockings and shoes. Meanwhile she talks about her life.
A colourful procession of people passes in review: TB patients, nuns, lung
specialists, poor chicken farmers, women smelling of eel, cleaning ladies,
violent men, headmasters, gypsies, hunters. The stories evoke a world filled
with forests, sanatoriums, ramshackle houses on the edge of sand drifts. They
are fragments from a gruesome book of fairy tales. How can I fit them into my
imaginary painting?

With many patients, including her, parts of the lungs were surgically removed.
To do so, a hole was made on the side of the breast and a number of
ribs were sawn off. These ribs, she relates, were stored in the attic. She laughs.
An attic filled with ribs.

She goes on: ‘Once a girl was lying next to me, Grietje. She was still very
young, maybe just became eighteen, and she was very beautiful. I can still
easily imagine her. Really a good-looking girl, in a yellow jumper with brown
piping. From Grietje, they had removed eight ribs. In spring we went outside.
We went for walks through the forests, picked up leaves. At some point Grietje
asked me: ‘Ans, can you see it?’ I started walking behind her, looked at her
jumper and said: ‘Oh no, not at all.’ But that was not true; you could see a
sizeable hollow in her back. She asked again: ‘You really cannot see anything
of it?’ ‘Well. I said, a very little bit, but almost nothing and you really have to
know about it. But do remember to walk upright; you have to keep your back
straight.’ It was a beautiful day in spring, the serviceberry blossoms were flowering
along the waterside…’

Her eyes became turbid. She puffs out a pall of smoke.

Grietje did not make it. The TB came back and she died. Suddenly Ans gets
up; she gives me a mysterious look and motions me to follow her. We go to the
corridor. We enter a blue room, serving as a storage space: suitcases, balcony
chairs, hatboxes. A picture showing a panoramic lake at a late sun. Ducks with
elongated necks are flying over the waving reed panicles. You can hear their
wings wheezing. ‘Just take that away,’ Ans orders me and signals towards a
spring mattress. Behind it appears a bookcase, covered with a curtain. Ans
bows and pares over the titles. Now and then she swears under her breath.
Then she raises her finger triumphantly. She picks up a book in a black leather
binding with a silver buckle. ‘This is Grietje’s prayer book,’ she explains, ‘she
gave me this shortly before she died.’ Her fingers tremble so badly that she
cannot open the lock. She shoves the book into my hands. ‘You just do it, I
can’t do anything anymore.’

It looks as if the book hasn’t been glanced over for decades. Between the pages,
faded pinkish and yellowish sheets have been folded: handwritten letters,
benedictions and devotional pictures.

She wants me to keep the missal. Politely, I refuse her offer, and feel embarrassed.
After some good-hearted insisting, she yields and tries to put the
book back in the binding. While doing this, a card falls from it; it floats in
a gliding motion to the floor and comes to a standstill with the front downwards.
I turn it around and read: THE SOUL ALWAYS BECOMES ONE WITH
WHAT IT LOVES.

Back in the pink room, it is time for the regular soap series. While she stares
at the television screen, slightly sardonic, I make some pencil sketches, quick
as lightning, of her face, her figure between all her objects, the stepped clock,
the sailing ship, the pile of tea tins. ‘Make me more beautiful than I am, will
you,’ she remarks without looking at me, ‘my sister used to be the most beautiful
of all of us. Now she has to shave her upper lip every day.’

I get my coat from the hall stand, greet her and walk over the dark red Marmoleum
to the front

Anton Valens (1964, nl) Studied art in Pennsylvania and Amsterdam, among other places. Made
his debut in 2004 with Meester in de hygiëne (Master of hygiene), a collection of stories about his
experiences with house-bound elderly people. Other writings include Dweiloorlog (The mop war),
Ik wilde naar de rand van Beijing (I wanted to find the edge of Beijing) in 2008, and the novel Vis (Fish) in
2009. His latest novel Het boek Ont (Man and mail) was nominated for the AKO Literature prize 2012.